SSD or HDD for FSX...Confused

[JohnOmaha]

I just purchased a new computer for FSX. I have a 256GB SSD and 1TB 7200RPM for storage. All the posts I have read I am confused on wether to put FSX on the SSD (which has the OS) or the HDD. What should I do?

 

Thanks for any help.

John

[greggerm]

SSD's will help with the loading times for MSFS and any other game/simulator for that matter.  SSD's will generally not help with framerate issues. Some claim that SSD's have improved the simulator's smoothness, but this is subjective based on the computer itself - older systems may see some benefits there, but newer systems likely will not.

 

Personally, I find that the SSD is most beneficial being the primary system drive (holding Windows and your apps) rather than being a drive dedicated to simulators and games. The snappy speed will be felt far more often and with far more noticeable results than with simulators. If you have only one SSD drive, I'd keep it as the primary drive. No muss, no fuss.

 

-Greg

[VeryBumpy]

I agree with Greg, OS and heavily used programs on SSD.

[JohnOmaha]

Thanks Greg, that was helpful in my decision.

 

John

[Noel]

I just purchased a new computer for FSX. I have a 256GB SSD and 1TB 7200RPM for storage. All the posts I have read I am confused on wether to put FSX on the SSD (which has the OS) or the HDD. What should I do? Thanks for any help. John

A 1Tb HDD is very cheap nowadays. Do yourself a favor and pick up a 2nd 256Gb or more SATA 3 SSD if your mainboard supports SATA 3. Save the cheap drive for data, non-critical games that perhaps you play infrequently, etc. Put your OS and high-use apps on your 256Gb SDD, and put FSX w/ all addon's on the 2nd SSD. If you owned a 500+GB SATA 3 SSD I would suggest you put OS & FSX on it, and save the slow boat for everything else. This latter approach is the one I use and I like the fact I can back up OS/FSX from one single drive. No need to backup separate drives at the same time to have it all work as it should after a back up. But as I say, w/ the 256Gb SSD you have now best to pick up a 2nd SSD. Why folks support putting FSX on a 7200rpm HDD doesn't make sense to me when I consider how much file writes to memory occur while running FSX. I think there is some improvement in smoothness by having FSX on an SSD, whether it's on the same SSD as OS or otherwise. The argument is also made that having OS and FSX on separate fast SSDs is the best possible configuration, but this I believe would be dependent on whether or not FSX demands more simultaneous read requests than your SSD's controller can execute, and they do execute requests in parallel.

[Appliance]

 

 

What should I do?

 

Regardless ... locate the page file on the hard drive NOT on the SSD ... uses up writes needlessly.

[Bob Scott]

Regardless ... locate the page file on the hard drive NOT on the SSD ... uses up writes needlessly.

Provided that you have a sufficient amount of RAM (my rough guideline would be 6+ GB), actual writes to the page file are few and far between...I have been running my entire OS, including the page file, on a 160GB Intel SSD for several years with heavy usage, and the Intel SSD Toolbox is still reporting close to 100% remaining life on the SSD.

 

Regards